


smoke signals

by motiondragon



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, faye aggressively cares, jet understandably has trust issues and bi feelings to work through, polya, post-canon fixit, spike recovers from a near death experience and works through some things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 10:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11011695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motiondragon/pseuds/motiondragon
Summary: Jet finds him half an hour later, smoke curling from the cracked hatch of the main vent. “Spike. Give them to me."“Wow,” Spike coughs drily, “Five words. You sure know how to charm a guy.”





	smoke signals

Rock, press, pain, shift. Spike’s sight, blurred dark, speckled with white. Salt, he hazards deliriously, and the black beneath his cheek a countertop made of gunmetal scrap, the logical end to a night of clubbing and recreational brawling. It explains well the stars burning, the stars pinned pain-bright throughout his body.

It’s a nice bartop supporting him at least, cool and firm and shadowy. It supports his weight, rocks him into painless oblivion.

_-_

_I hope it hurts, you fucking asshole._

Except the moon is _so_ fucking annoying, and Spike can’t sleep. It’s too loud, the noise beaming straight through him even as he buries his head against the bartop, which makes an oddly rough sound.

_I should take a heel to your balls and _make it fucking hurt_ because what you did, Spike Spiegel, was a kind of stupid I can’t believe—_

__

The moon and burning heat gradually dissipate, a last curl of smoke in the void. He’d be relieved if he wasn’t just gone.

__

_-_

__

Something pinches Spike’s nasal ridge _hard_ and he wakes up with a jerk. Which, god, sets off a wracking pain in his chest, his stomach, his _everything._

__

_“_ He’s alive,” comes from his left, unamused.

__

“Gentle, Valentine,” from his right, disapproving. Spike reaches out to touch cool metal before it carefully shifts his hand back to his side, skimming his cheek. He blinks against filmy eye gunk, frowning to see the blur of Jet’s hand withdrawing from his face.

__

“You’ve been in and out for a week and a half,” a yellow blotch--Faye--says curtly. Her eyes cut into him as he blearily side-eyes her. “You owe me the rest of your life for the shit I had to do to drag you back here---” Spike feels a sharp movement above his head, and Faye goes silent.

__

“V’shis,” he manages to croak. “Gang?”

__

“Gone,” Jet replies shortly. “Dead or scurried; the police came after we pulled you out of there. You should get some more rest.” There’s a racket as Jet’s heavy boots make a brisk retreat, dull silence left in its wake. 

__

Spike is starting to make out details when he realizes Faye is gone from her place. Then, as suddenly as she’d left, she’s there by his elbow, sliding a hand against his jaw.

__

“You talk in your sleep, you know,” Faye purrs. Her nails prick his throat, sly. “You don't answer questions when you're unconscious, though, so I'm going to ask you again. Do you feel alive now, Spike Spiegel?”

__

Spike flinches as Faye’s grip tightens, but doesn’t answer. It’s one thing to know what she’s asking for; another, to know himself. Faye seems to take his silence as an answer.

__

“You’re hypocrites, you and Jet both,” she hisses, and oh, she’s something much, much worse than the moon, Spike’s harrassed brain groans.

__

“You go on and on about living in the now, about putting the past behind, and then you spout some bull fatalistic crap and I'm supposed to buy into that? Fuck you! I’ve spent enough time brooding over the past and really, I don't give a shit what happened to you or him. _Commit_ to living, or else I’m going to make your life a living _hell_.” 

__

She punctuates her point with a hard nip on his bottom lip. Spike’s left with a burning mouth and the sore need to hole up somewhere he can’t see the sun for at least a _month_.

__

-

__

Jet’s been avoiding him. 

__

It’s bizarre how easily he can fold up all that height and bulk into spaces where Spike isn't, considering that for all that the Bebop was a big ship, their actual living quarters were a cramped mess. In all fairness, it’s not hard avoiding Spike when the fastest he can move balanced on two crutches is at a stubby corgi’s walking pace.

__

(He misses Ein, that little bastard. No one had the heart to avoid Ein, slow or not, especially with Ed bouncing along by his side.)

__

Faye on the other hand keeps getting into his space, annoying him into eating, attacking his gnarled hair with a rough brush, and ripping apart and replacing his bandages with the bedside manners of a prize cockfighter. She hides his cigarettes for a week so his bullet-punched lungs could patch properly, and sneers when he threatens her with a crutch. Spike is nearing the end of his stick, cold on one front, hot on the other, and between the thick tension and the cigarette withdrawal it's making him sick.

__

So Spike flushes Faye’s most expensive toiletries out the airlock and hobbles away as fast as he can when she screams and jets out to rescue them.

\- __

Jet finds him half an hour later, smoke curling from the cracked hatch of the main vent.

__

“Spike. Give them to me.”

__

“Wow,” Spike coughs drily, “Five words. You sure know how to charm a guy.” He stares passively at the wall as Jet pulls the door open the rest of the way and the cigarettes from his hands. Spike doesn't miss how Jet avoids touching him.

__

“Why’d you even take me back?” Spike asks his knees, the hatch door, the wall. The lamps in the vent pulse over Jet’s profile, bloodlike, in contrast to the stillness of the adjacent room. “Why do you let me stay?” Spike asks. “When I---”

__

“You told me you hate the story about the cats like it was supposed to make any sense,” Jet interrupts, “and then you left. You could still leave when you're feeling better. I’m a bounty hunter, not a sadist.”

__

“Some would say it’s one and the same,” Spike smirks. “And you knew what I meant.”

__

Jet exhales. “Pretty sure it's synonymous to masochism, actually.” 

They sit in thoughtful silence for a moment, debating the power dynamics of their ill-gotten career.

__

“You didn't answer my question,” Spike says eventually.

__

They regard each other, Spike’s face silhouetted in blue, Jet’s in red. The expression on Jet’s face urges Spike to reach, and for once in the odd decade they’ve known each other, there's nothing left holding him back. So he does. 

__

He feels the shivery touch of Jet’s fingers. The involuntary curl of steel knuckles as Spike pulls them against his forehead, slides them down to his cheek, and exhales.

__

“Yeah.”

__

“I--”

__

“I hate cats,” Spike says hoarsely. “Because every time I saw one I’d remember something I couldn’t forget. But now they're all dead. I don't want to be anywhere else anymore, if that's okay.” _I know I left. I can leave again, if you want,_ he doesn't say. He holds onto the solid feeling of Jet’s hands in his, Jet’s hands against Spike’s cheek, selfish.

__

Jet’s breath leaves him with a whoosh, the vast unknowable balloon in the room punctured. “I'm glad you came back.” It’s as simple as that.

__

Jet chokes as Spike mouths along the delicate, nerveless seams between his metal knuckles, the flush on his cheeks too ruddy to be blamed on the lighting. Spike kisses, and licks, and noses until Jet’s body is curled into him like his fingers, shaking from the onslaught of affection. “Spike--”

__

“Me too,” Spike murmurs. “I'm glad too. Get over here, old man.” It's still a marvel how Jet can be so big, and still tidily (if a little roughly) fold all of himself into Spike’s body. He’s still too careful not to touch, knees and thighs bracing _over_ Spike’s lap instead of _on_ it, and Spike thinks it's so stupid and it _is_ so stupid he abruptly yanks all fifty thousand pounds of unsuspecting cyborg over the lip of the vent and onto his broken body.

__

Faye chooses that exact moment to blaze into the room, only to start shrieking with laughter.

__

**Author's Note:**

> Something I've been working on since I saw Cowboy Bebop this year! I might add more as I think about Spike's venture into polya with Faye and Jet but I think it's good as a oneshot for now, not-quite-resolved relationship issues or nah. Note that yelling at someone to ‘live, damnit’ and then biting them on the mouth is not a good cure for trauma and/or depression, but an approach that i thought made sense for Faye.


End file.
